Mar 9 Canada vs Bitcoin

Canada has come out against crytocurrency mining. “If you want to come settle here, plug in your servers and do Bitcoin mining, we’re not really interested,” says Québec Premier Philippe Couillard. “There needs to be added value for our society – just having servers to do transaction mining and acquire new Bitcoins, I don’t see the added value.”

Dismissing cryptocurrencies, he adds that he would more welcoming of companies looking to help create “a real ecosystem or a real technological transformation centred on blockchain.”

The energy firm isn’t that keen on having more miners on its client list either. “If all we do is connect the Bitcoin miners who have applied, we could create an issue for ourselves,” CEO Eric Martel tells Bloomberg. “There are limits to what we can do. I have a huge network with lots of capacity, but I cannot host the entire planet.”

Instead, Hydro-Québec is targeting data centres, with Amazon and Google already operating such facilities in Montreal. The province has over 40 data centres up and running.

If budding Bitcoin miners still haven’t got the message, Martel says he would consider charging them more than the current C$0.05 per kWh that the likes of data centres have to pay.